


Death, in three easy installments

by Leezls



Category: Wolf 359 (Radio)
Genre: Post-Finale, Rated teen for language, Sad, Self-Hatred, dude has a lot of guilt, the other surviving members are mentioned but not enough, uhh
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-21
Updated: 2018-03-21
Packaged: 2019-04-05 10:49:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 707
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14042625
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Leezls/pseuds/Leezls
Summary: Douglas Fernand Eiffel is dead. Funny thing, death. It happens all at once: you’re there and then you’re not. Suddenly your body goes cold and people have to attend your kickass viking funeral and yeah, there’s tears, but they’re not all genuine. When you’re dead, they have to be nice to you. They have to put on a façade of grief. But then, people move on, and like clockwork, life finds a way to move on from the tragedies.





	Death, in three easy installments

Douglas Fernand Eiffel is dead. Funny thing, death. It happens all at once: you’re there and then you’re not. Suddenly your body goes cold and people have to attend your kickass viking funeral and yeah, there’s tears, but they’re not all genuine. When you’re dead, they have to be nice to you. They have to put on a façade of grief. But then, people move on, and like clockwork, life finds a way to move on from the tragedies. 

Of course, Eiffel had to go and fuck up a perfectly good system. Eiffel had to be special and die in three easy installments instead of paying up front. 

The first time Douglas Eiffel died started with a drink. It started with a kidnapping. It started in the driver’s seat of a 2002 Ford Explorer as he watched the hood smash into another car at 47 miles per hour. That moment lasted eons. But, the crash didn’t kill him. What killed Douglas Fernand Eiffel the first time? Waking up in a hospital with a few scratches, and glancing over at the bed to his left. 

Seeing what he had done to his daughter, those two kids? That killed him the first time. 

The second time Douglas Fernand Eiffel died could be seen as his actual, literal death. At least, to the world 7.795 lightyears from where he heard the news. He couldn’t go back. It’s not like he had anything to come back to, besides a cold metal cell and mashed potatoes with mystery prison gravy. But still. He couldn’t go back. 

Of course, he deserved everything that came at him from the dark recesses of the universe in its attempt to enact justice, but he didn’t expect being legally dead. That was a surprise lost in a barrage of constant surprises, so he never got time to ruminate on the fact that he had a grave. 

The third time Doug died? Strapped to a memory-erasing, mind-controlling science chair, saving his friends (his family) from the one person keeping them on the USS Horrible Unending Nightmare. He didn’t even get the time to finish his sentence before the chair zapped his memories away, for good. 

It’s funny how many nights he had spent, wishing he could forget everything and start over. The thought had always been shoved to the side (he deserved to live with what he’d done) but now, in the vast, void-y expanse of space, having braved a plant monster and a doctor with good motivations without a drop of morals and Goddard Futuristics and getting jettisoned into space against his will three times and death, so much more death than there should be on a three person mission to the asscrack of nowhere, monitoring one star out of trillions. It was supposed to be a three person mission. 

So, yeah. Douglas Fernand Eiffel is dead. Three times over, in fact. And yet, he’s still kicking. Without any of his memories or, you know, being legally alive, but you don’t need memories OR the law to kick life in the balls and steal all its money. 

Sure, he had Minkowski and Hera. He had Lovelace and Jacobi. He even had Pryce, who was in the same amnesiac boat with him. But he saw the look in Minkowski’s eyes when he called her Renée and hugged her and apologized for not getting her (admittedly sparse) references to Star Trek. He saw Lovelace’s tired shoulders and the bags under her eyes from day after day of working to get them home. He didn’t see Jacobi much. Doug was in the same boat as Pryce, so she didn’t have any memory of recently deceased Doug Eiffel to mourn. 

And Hera. He heard the way she said “Officer Eiffel” when she was tired and too overworked to call him Doug. He heard her sad laughter when Eiffel said something stupid in the audio logs that Doug had taken to listening to. She sometimes cracked a joke that past Doug would have gotten before realizing her mistake and shrinking into herself. 

He wanted to console her, to console all of them, but he had hurt them. He had hurt them, and he didn’t even have the decency to remember it.

**Author's Note:**

> Yo this is my first fic 
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> Uhhh
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> Live life to the fullest and all that


End file.
